Putin no longer shocks anyone

At least that’s what The Wall Street Journal and Politico are reporting. Talk of such a test of NATO’s readiness to invoke Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty has been going on for a long time and has now become mere media routine, although not so long ago it was striking in its shocking novelty.

The first shock was the Kremlin’s operation to annex Crimea using “little green men,” followed by the alleged deployment of anti-government “activists”—armed by unknown means—in the Donbas. It was brazen, defiant, and blatant: “We’re doing this because we want to and we can.” The demonstrative nature of actions that were supposed to be covert was a key feature of the plan, as the opponent’s helplessness served as an additional mobilizing factor for their own side and a source of frustration for the enemy. Simulating such hybrid scenarios for NATO’s vulnerable territories became a regular exercise for Western headquarters and think tanks, and the conclusions grew increasingly bleak. For instance, in 2014, Russia faced a Ukraine that was in a transitional phase of post-Maidan transformation, and its army and other security forces were ill-prepared to repel the aggressor. But even NATO—the world’s most powerful military alliance—did not seem to fully grasp what to do in the event of such a “non-obvious yet obvious” attack involving so-called “Narva partisans.”

And yet, until 2022, these speculations were largely theoretical; few people imagined that the Kremlin would lose its mind enough to provoke NATO. But after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and as the war unfolded, the belief that Putin would act cautiously evaporated. This one—maybe. Quite quickly, fears of a hybrid operation against NATO countries were joined by not abstract but entirely well-founded scenarios regarding the conditions under which Russian troops would be ordered to use nuclear weapons. From the very beginning, Moscow urged the West not to intervene, hinting at the risks of unleashing a nuclear war, but this was still largely dismissed as mere rhetoric. However, as the invading army began to suffer setbacks, the idea of using tactical nuclear weapons to turn the tide began to take on practical significance for Russian strategists. By the fall of 2022, the likelihood had increased to such an extent that both the U.S. and its allies, as well as China and India, were forced to issue specific warnings through various channels.

Since then, in fact, a clear understanding has taken shape that Putin, if he so chooses, could resort to a nuclear strike, and that against this backdrop, talk of any kind of hybrid operation is out of the question.

The arrival in the White House of Donald Trump—who was emphatically hostile toward NATO’s European partners and sympathetic to Putin—gave new life to the idea of a hybrid attack: doubts that the United States would come to the aid of its allies have understandably intensified. At the same time, the lack of success on the Ukrainian front is supposedly pushing the Kremlin to seek new leverage against the West in order to force it—and, through it, Ukraine—to accept peace on Russia’s terms. Testing the limits of NATO members’ patience with missiles, drones, and sabotage operations has shown that they remain unprepared to mount a decisive counterattack, although they are now going so far in their courage as to directly call Russia an aggressor.

On August 28, at a meeting of interior ministers from the Baltic region in Flensburg, Germany, plans were announced to create a joint task force to defend against drones and hybrid threats, which “will enable the region’s states to rapidly exchange information and coordinate responses to dangerous incidents.” This was announced by German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt. To begin with, as is customary, a working group will be established to oversee the creation of the operational task force. The speed of decision-making is impressive. At the same time, we see that the Baltic states are not relying on NATO’s Article 5, but are seeking additional mechanisms to respond to threats at their own, regional level—not potential future threats, but those that are already quite commonplace.

By the second quarter of the twenty-first century, Putin had greatly expanded the conception of what is possible. He has conditioned Europe to believe that Russia could attack as early as tomorrow. That it could use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. And if in Ukraine, then not just there. This no longer shocks anyone; it’s simply taken note of, and the odds are analyzed. It’s the new normal. There are no ethical barriers for him, and instilling fear through his ruthlessness and unpredictability apparently gives him a special, perverse pleasure. There is only one known way to protect oneself from this monster: crush him. All this talk of negotiations—which invariably includes the refrain about the Kremlin’s rationality—only obscures a picture that has long been clear to most. But our partners have not yet reached that level of insight regarding Russia.